homie

Etymology 1

Earliest known reference is in the 1946 tune by Ella Mae Morse and Freddie Slack, "The House of Blue Lights," when Morse improvises a spoken-word intro. Equivalent to home + -ie.

noun

1. (slang) Someone, particularly a friend or male acquaintance, from one's hometown.
2. (slang) A close friend or fellow member of a youth gang.
   Hey there, Francis, my homie!
   Yo, homie!
3. (African-American Vernacular) An inner-city youth.
4. (African-American Vernacular) A boyfriend or partner of a closeted man, used along with "Lil," to mean a bottom and "Big," to mean a top.

Etymology 2

Variant spelling of Polari (early-to-mid 20th-century British English cant/slang popular among gay men) omi (“man, bloke”).

noun

1. (Polari) Alternative spelling of omi (“man”)
   As feely homies, when we launched ourselves onto the gay scene, polari was all the rage. We would zhoosh our riahs, powder our eeks, climb into our bona new drag, don our batts and troll off to some bona bijou bar. 1977, Rictor Norton, quoting Peter Burton, The Gentle Art of Confounding Naffs, quoted in Myth of the Modern Homosexual, Bloomsbury Publishing, published 2016, page 115